Tag: anti-trust

The European Commission has revealed that it plans to investigate Microsoft’s recent decision to support rival file formats in its Office products. Among these will be Open Document Format (ODF) and the decision to introduce direct support is seen as a concession to antitrust regulators and a serious step towards improving customer choice…

The European Union has just hit Microsoft a record fine of around £625m.

It’s in response to Microsoft charging “unreasonable prices” to developers for data on how to get their applications working happily on Windows. Naughty old MS was ordered by the EU in 2004 to start charging more reasonable fees for licensing out its patents – but clearly the EU thinks it hasn’t complied with that. Hence the cash windfall for Brussels…

The European Union is looking into another two Microsoft anti-competition issues, it said today, with its aggressive bundling and software interoperability coming under fire from the Brussels-based freedom fighters.

At the centre of the new EU competition worries is the way MS Office interacts with rival products (ie, it often doesn’t), plus the way some of its products are locked down and force users to use Internet Explorer…

Microsoft continues to face run-ins with the European Union about its software and anti-competitiveness. In the latest skirmish, it has agreed to update Vista to meet the EU's requirements in its first service pack due out later this year. Changes…